New edict from the Church of Global Warming: get poor, and cut down on the cow farts

Politico reports on the latest stern admonitions from the United Nations to knock off all that prosperity, before the wrath of the Angry Sky Gods descends upon us:

A United Nations science panel issued a sobering wake-up call to world policymakers Sunday, warning that countries must make dramatic changes in their energy consumption, their use of technology and even their ways of life to avert the catastrophic effects of climate change.

The only options that stand a chance of heading off the worst of the harm would require cutting at least slightly into economic growth in the coming decades, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. Nations may even have to make ambitious attempts to remove carbon pollution from the atmosphere — not just limit how much comes out of smokestacks and tailpipes.

How are we supposed to develop and deploy the miraculous carbon-scrubbing technology, if we force the advanced nations of the West to cut sharply back on economic growth? Don’t buy this nonsense about “cutting at least slightly into economic growth,” because there is a zero point zero percent chance that China, Russia, or the developing nations are going to hamstring their industrial efforts in the name of global warming. If these people are serious, they’re going to have to drag the only part of the world that heeds their commands into a pre-industrial environment, in order to get the global carbon reductions they’re talking about.

The highly anticipated report’s 37-page summary for policymakers doesn’t offer a precise dollar figure of how much all this will cost. But it warns that half-measures won’t cut it, and time is running out.

Well, of course they don’t have a precise dollar figure. They’d get laughed off the front pages. In fact, the Obama Administration asked them to tone the report down a bit, so as not to frighten voters with their draconian cost estimates. They did this by sprinkling their calculations with some fairy dust about the “improvements to public health and lower energy costs from increased efficiency that would happen if fossil fuels were limited.”

Increased efficiency? You mean like the way people in cold climates freeze to death when their government-mandated wind farms fail to generate the promised electrical output? Or when clouds keep the solar panels for working properly? I guess the only reason we keep forcing ourselves to use those cursed fossil fuels is because we like the smell.

“There is a clear message from science: To avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual,” Germany’s Ottmar Edenhofer, one of the three co-chairs of the report, said in a statement.

But the panel warned that “only major institutional and technological changes” have a chance of limiting the rise in global average temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — the target that scientists say could limit the most dramatic effects of climate change. Without action, the report says, the temperature is set to rise by as much as 4.8 degrees by 2100.

Yes, we must panic and surrender our economic independence immediately, because the same climate models that have been absolutely wrong about everything for the past 30 years confidently predict doom in 2100. The people who told you arctic ice would be pretty much gone by now, and coastal cities would be underwater, have rescheduled the apocalypse. What happened to the hot environmentalist theory that the flat temperatures of the past two decades – anticipated by none of their vaunted climate “models” – were due to the previously unsuspected capacity of the deep oceans to swallow global warming? Are the oceans going to lose that capability over the next eighty years?

The IPCC’s report outlines a series of options for tackling climate change, including slashing emissions from electricity generation, boosting energy efficiency, increasing investments in wind, solar and nuclear power and eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels.

More ambitious steps include “carbon dioxide removal” technologies, though the report said those “carry side-effects and long-term consequences on a global scale” and it’s uncertain how much CO2 those could remove by the end of the century.

Wind and solar power are ridiculous boondoggles with cost and performance issues that make the term “efficiency” a joke. Nuclear power performs a lot better, but it’ll be fun watching the environmentalist community convince itself to support the construction of more nuclear power plants, especially after the Fukushima disaster.

The idea of giving the dishonest hacks, raving ideologues, and opportunistic politicians who fill the pews of the Church of Global Warming a shot at deliberately re-engineering the Earth’s atmosphere fills me with existential dread. Best-case scenario: gigantic amounts of money poured into lucrative dead-end projects. Worst case: Fallen Angels.

How much of a reduction in carbon emissions are we talking about, global warmists?

To have a chance of limiting the temperature rise to 2 degrees, countries must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent to 70 percent compared with 2010 levels by the middle of the century — and to near-zero by 2100, the report says.

Existing efforts to take on the problem aren’t enough. The report says global emissions levels increased more rapidly between 2000 and 2010 than they had in any of the three previous decades.

And delaying major efforts through 2030 would “substantially increase the difficulty of the transition to low longer?term emissions levels and narrow the range of options” for staying below the 2-degree target, the report says.

Forty to seventy percent reduction in “greenhouse gas” over the next 35 years, while the Chinese laugh and light up smokestacks like a chain-smoker going through a pack of cigarettes? That’s the end of Western industry. The “near-zero by 2100” part might actually be less fanciful, given the rate of technological progress… provided, of course, we don’t strangle technological progress by trying to cut carbon emissions by 70 percent before 2050.

Fortunately, our salvation may be at hand, thanks to a new report from the Environmental Protection Agency, which has discovered global warming reduces carbon emissions. From the Washington Examiner:

In the EPA’s “Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks,” the agency said that greenhouse gas emissions dropped 3.4 percent in 2012 from 2011. And emissions are down to their lowest level since 1994.

Among the reasons cited: Less heating fuel is burned when it’s warmer outside.

“The decrease from 2011 to 2012 was due to a decrease in the carbon intensity of fuels consumed by power producers to generate electricity due to a decrease in the price of natural gas, a decrease in transportation sector emissions attributed to a small increase in fuel efficiency across different transportation modes and limited new demand for passenger transportation, and much warmer winter conditions resulting in a decreased demand for heating fuel in the residential and commercial sectors,” the EPA said in the executive summary of the 529-page report.

Carbon emissions cause global warming; global warming reduces carbon emissions. But if you really want to cut down those emissions, it’s not good enough to bake the northern United States until Wisconsin has the same climate as southern California. No, you’ve got to deal with the cow farts, you irresponsible carnivores:

Besides cars and trucks, one major reason is because of cow and pig manure and urine, which produce harmful methane and nitrous oxide. Both of those have been on the increase. In fact, methane and nitrous oxide rank second and third behind carbon dioxide as the top three drivers of global warming, said the EPA.

And you know what that means: Punitive taxation! You can see why Big Government types love global warming mythology. From the Daily Caller:

Senate Republicans warn that President Obama’s new focus on agricultural methane emissions could mean a tax on livestock emissions — including cow flatulence.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune and fellow GOP senators sent a letter to Obama administration officials urging them not to regulate livestock emissions as part of the president’s crusade against global warming.

Obama’s “Climate Action Plan” would require the dairy industry to reduce methane emissions by 25 percent by 2020. The Agriculture Department, Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency are set to put together a “Biogas” roadmap to reduce methane emissions.

Republicans argue that Obama’s methane reduction plan could lead to “heavy-handed” regulations that would “have detrimental implications on livestock operations across the country.”

Detrimental effects on livestock operations? Music to the ears of certain bureaucrats. The Bureau of Land Management’s paramilitary strike force is standing by!

What we really need to control are the emissions of Big Government, and the symbiotic academic organizations that feed upon it.